


Someone I Love

by brock (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: AU, Angst, Anxiety, Art, Artist Steve, Bucky has feelings, Deaf Clint, Depression, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, High School, High School AU, M/M, Modern Setting, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Teenagers, but doesn't want to show them, friends - Freeform, i guess, i wish there was more clint bc hes the favorite child, sam wilson is cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-15 01:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11220777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/brock
Summary: Bucky's been in love with Steve for a long time, he's just waiting for it to catch up with him.





	Someone I Love

**Author's Note:**

> "i hate romance so let me just write some real quick"
> 
> Edit: I had to change the rating to teen & up bc not rated was putting a mature message beforehand

Bucky could tell there was something wrong with Steve before he even opened his mouth. Something wrong with his head, that is. With his knobbly knees, and scrapes up and down his arms. He had to have been crazy to fight those boys, at least four years older and a hell of a lot taller.

 

Bucky could remember blood in his teeth -- or, no, maybe it was just a crook in his nose, streaming into his tilted grin. He looked savage when he looked up at Bucky, and it wasn’t until later that Bucky just realized that that was his nature. Steve was savage, that was a given fact.

 

“You okay?” Bucky had called out to him, not wanting to get too close to the thin boy; he still had fighting in his eyes.

 

The boy blinked, the dazed look wiping off his face, replaced with a smile. 

 

(When Steve told this story, he won against the older boys, instead of Bucky chasing them away. Bucky only let him tell people this because he was sure that this was what Steve remembered. Steve didn’t lie.)

 

\--

 

Natasha was doing a new thing where she slapped the back of Bucky’s head every time she caught him staring at Steve. It was hysterical to only herself and Clint, and it made Steve look at Bucky like he knew that Bucky could translate Clint and Natasha’s little language and he was withholding information. 

 

Bucky wouldn’t have minded this new development if it didn’t point out just how much he did stare at Steve. And he did it a lot. Sometimes Natasha would catch Bucky brooding after, and she’d turn to Clint, laughing some more, her hands in tight fists, her arms not-so-discreetly in a large cross.

 

It didn’t help that he thought that Sam was catching up with the meaning of Natasha and Clint’s little circus act. At least Sam kept to his own goddamn business, because Bucky knew for a fact that Sam had known about Bucky’s little staring problem since at least sophomore year, and hadn’t confronted Bucky about it yet. 

 

\--

 

“Maybe we should make it into a drinking game,” Natasha suggested, laying like a cat in a sun patch on Bucky’s carpet. 

 

Bucky knew that she was talking about him staring at Steve - and probably more so about how inherently reckless he was around Steve, because it had been the last thing that she had been talking about before she started ranting about the conjugations of the word  _ blablater _ (which was not on their upcoming French test).

 

Bucky leaned more of his weight on the side of his bed, closing his eyes. “How about you don’t? I mean, it’s lucky that he hasn’t caught on yet. I wouldn’t really like to speed up the process if I could help it.”

 

Natasha started scribbling down the future tenses for _blablater_ in her notebook. “Ever think that speeding up the process might not be a bad thing?”

 

\--

 

Basically, it had gone like this: Bucky had probably been in love with Steve Rogers since he was twelve. Strictly, Bucky hadn’t really had his sexual awakening until he was fifteen, meaning that he had known for three years and hadn’t bothered yet to tell Steve.

 

Sure, he was pining, but it didn’t  _ ache  _ the way he thought it should. The way Steve had seemed to be with Peggy Carter when she lived in Brooklyn for all of seven months. Steve was there. Steve had always been there. And if, for some supremely unknown reason, Bucky decided to confess his undying love to Steve, he’d be there for Bucky to tell him. 

 

It was also that Steve was too good for Bucky. He was mean. He wore oversized sweaters. His nose was always red. He was good at art (like, intellectually and physically).  He talked too much about socialism and feminism and Klimt’s affairs and how prolific Walt Whitman was and if Catholics should really follow the teachings of the medieval saints. Most importantly, Steve was interesting.

 

Bucky had always known that he couldn’t compare to Steve in all the ways that mattered.

 

At first, when Bucky had woken up to sticky sheets and a fist down his shorts, he had reasoned with himself that Steve was always sick and weak and small. Bucky could never tell him, but Bucky could also never make it up to him.

 

\--

 

Steve always made him watch Star Wars on Friday nights. He insisted that the eighty dollars on the box set were spent in vain if they didn’t watch the movies frequently enough. 

 

Steve mainly just talked through them, the only exception was Princess Leia’s confession. (“I love you.” “I know.” Bucky stupidly hadn’t known why he’d repeated this five times in front of the mirror the day after their first Star Wars night when he was fourteen.)

 

Steve was sketching Han Solo and somehow still rapidly repeating a favorite rant about the new History of Art teacher at the same time. Bucky was neither listening to Steve or watching the movie. He was staring heavy lidded at Steve’s rouge-ish cheek bones; it was as if they were tattooed on that night. If Natasha was there, she’d have to take a shot for Bucky’s impulsiveness, because Bucky could feel a slew of words escaping his throat like vomit as if he was a dry-drunk.

 

“You’re cute when you blush,” Bucky said, cutting off Steve mid sentence. It came out more flirtatious than intended, and Bucky felt the need to put his head between his knees and dry heave.

 

When Bucky had the courage to look Steve in the eyes, Steve gave a nervous smile. “Thanks, I guess.”

 

Bucky decided that Steve was only flushing deeper because that wasn’t something that a strictly straight friend would say to his other straight friend.

 

\--

 

No one except for Steve really knew that the nerve damage in Bucky’s right arm really affected his way of life. In reality, his arm had been nearly amputated, the PTs weren’t that hopeful in the months after his accident. He had had to give up cello; he had loved cello. He almost had to give up soccer, until Steve and Sam had agreed to train him back into shape in the summer between junior and senior year. 

 

Steve knew that it was hard for Bucky to model for him since the hospital and the doctors and the medication. That’s why it was surprising to Bucky that Steve asked anyways.

 

Steve knew that if he asked then Bucky would no longer say no. Knew that his love for seeing himself made irrefutably  _ pretty  _ by a biased source won out over his fear of people seeing the scars spanning down his arm in such a permanent way. 

 

“How do you want me?” Bucky asked when Steve told him that he was going to be his model for his final project. He mainly said this to see Steve’s cheeks become stained like wine. He laid on his brown sheets.

 

Steve fumbled with his good HB and 2B pencils, unwilling to make eye contact with Bucky. “Yeah, you’re fine.”

 

It was oddly quiet the rest of the night as Steve sketched all of Bucky’s contours and fine lines. Bucky missed his earlier talk of Gertrude Stein that he felt lonely, so much so, he stupidly almost felt as though he could cry.

 

\--

 

“Are you going to tell him?” Sam asked casually after the soccer team’s last practice of the year. 

 

Bucky had been through this drill too many times with other people to play dumb. He waited until he untied his cleats to respond. “Is he going to reject me?”

 

It was the first time Bucky had seen pity in Sam’s eyes. 

 

\--

 

Every year, the school had a small art show for the end of term. Steve tried to be humble, but Bucky knew that Steve had taken count just to make sure that he had the most pieces of artwork hanging the year before.

 

This year, Steve had told him not to come. When Bucky asked him why, he’d just shrugged. Bucky’d told him that wasn’t a good enough fucking reason for fuck’s sake, Rogers, and that had been that.

 

He’d almost immediately understood when he entered the room. There, on the first available space was him, lying on his bed, stomach down, legs swinging off the side. Why hadn’t he at least put on a shirt when Steve had asked him if he could draw him? Why was he so fucking stupid?

 

The next thing he saw was that he was advertising the “People I Love” project that apparently ended off the school year. He looked around, embarrassed. Jesus fuck, most of the projects in the collection were portraits of people’s fucking  _ moms. _

 

Bucky left the room, heading to the bathroom. To pace, or maybe laugh, or maybe dry heave in the first accessible stall. Bucky was in there maybe thirty seconds, heavy breathing echoing finitely across the linoleum, before Steve fucking Rogers intruded. 

 

“Bucky?” Steve called when he walked in. His hand was probably on his hip. Bucky could imagine it.

 

Bucky exited the stall  to the not entirely unwelcoming angry/worried face of Steve. 

 

“I told you not to come, you idiot.” Steve sounded like his mother; Bucky ignored him.

 

“That was pretty fucking sappy, Rogers,” Bucky said in an even tone, avoiding Steve’s gaze. 

 

Steve bite his lip. “Well, that was kinda the point. It was kinda  _ supposed  _ to be sappy.”

 

Bucky looked at him, confused.

 

Steve sighed. He looked pained to elaborate. “Most confessions are pretty sappy.”

 

Bucky’s eyes probably bugged out of his head. Bucky would’ve never thought it was something like that, because Bucky didn’t think like that. He hadn’t thought that Steve thought like that either. 

 

“I’ve been in love with you since I was twelve.” It felt like Bucky had just taken the biggest breath he’d taken in years, like he had been breathing  _ wrong _ before and he was suddenly breathing right. 

 

“You idiot,” Steve said, eyes almost panicked, a nervous laugh escaping his mouth. Then he did something that Bucky would never in a million years have expected: he leaned in and kissed Bucky on the side of the mouth. “You’re such a stupid idiot.”

 

“Well, you’re stuck with this stupid idiot,” Bucky said, because that was something that they said to each other sometimes. It felt entirely foreign on his tongue this time; it wasn’t that unpleasant. 

**Author's Note:**

> so this was really choppy and short what else is new. can u tell i've been reading winter soldier comics?? it's also late and im tired.


End file.
